BIG Day Out punters will be greeted by police sniffer dogs at today's music festival at Flemington Racecourse.

Police made at least 85 drug-related arrests at the Sydney leg of the event on Friday.

Festival promoter Vivian Lees said local police were happy with the Big Day Out's security policy.

"The police have a harm mitigation approach. They will search people before they go into the venue and put some disincentive there," Mr Lees said yesterday.

"But the police are pretty comfortable about the way the show is going to be conducted. We do the crowd control ourselves. We have a music loving audience. We don't have gang behaviour."

While last year's event sold out months in advance, tickets are still available for today's event through Ticketmaster or at the gate for $132.

"We've sold around 40,000 tickets so far. We had 46,000 last year," he said yesterday.

Many have put the slower ticket sales down to mixed reactions to the 2009 line-up, headlined by American rocker Neil Young and young British band Arctic Monkeys, and bad memories of the dusty venue last year.

"The car park has been fixed and grassed now and it looks gorgeous," Mr Lees said.

"It's a long-term commitment by the VRC. They've been very welcoming to us."

This year Melbourne trio Living End are the highest-ranked Australian act playing the main stage at 6.20pm.

UK act the Prodigy will headline the Boiler Room, with chart toppers the Ting Tings playing at 2.15pm on the green stage.

Full line-up and times at www.bigdayout.com